Statistics

Hilariously slanted news piece from the AP. Good catch by Kathryn Lopez:

The Associated Press reports:

The nation’s leading breast-cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, is halting its partnerships with Planned Parenthood affiliates — creating a bitter rift, linked to the abortion debate, between two iconic organizations that have assisted millions of women.

After years of protests and criticism from pro-life advocates, the biggest breast cancer organization, Susan G. Komen for the Cure has announced it is halting further grants and donations to the Planned Parenthood.Figures from August directly from the Komen for the Cure foundation show 18 affiliates of the breast cancer charity gave a total of more than $569,000 to the Planned Parenthood abortion business in 2010. That was down from the $731,303 Komen officials publicly confirmed in October 2010, when they acknowledged that 20 of the 122 Komen affiliates gave to Planned Parenthood during the 2009 fiscal year.

Now, Komen says it is halting all grants because of public pressure from pro-life groups and due to the impending investigation in Congress of the Planned Parenthood abortion business.

Hundreds of students at Cabrini College just outside Philadelphia had their fortunes told at “Psychic Night” earlier this month, according to the student newspaper The Loquitur.

Students’ fortunes were told by professional tarot card readers at “Psychic Night” on Thursday Jan. 19, said the student newspaper. This is the second annual “Psychic Night” at Cabrini hosted by the Campus Activities Programming Board which brought the tarot card readers to campus.

I think the coverage of the March for Life in the media hit an all time low this year. With CBS making it look like a pro-abortion rally and no pictures at all of the immensity of the crowd. But at least the ombudsman at WaPo admits that the paper didn't do a great job. LifeSiteNews.com reports:

After receiving letters from “antiabortion readers” complaining about his paper’s coverage of the March for Life, the Washington Post’s ombudsman has penned a column agreeing with many of their criticisms.

Ombudsman Patrick Pexton says that the Washington Post gave an “incomplete picture” of the March for Life in both its print story and online photo gallery.

As you may have read I was asked to leave a restaurant in Knoxville because my beliefs did not support the owners beliefs on homosexuality. I had not said anything. I was just standing there waiting for a table when the owner came up and started yelling at me calling me names and telling me they were not going to serve me because of my alleged beliefs saying I hate gays. I said in as calm a way as I could that I don't hate gays and the things I have said were backed up by the CDC. I offered to send her the links.

There’s a brouhaha brewing in New Jersey over Gov. Chris Christie’s nomination to the New Jersey Supreme Court of Bruce Harris. Turns out Harris wrote a letter in 2009 supporting gay marriage — and equating support for our marriage tradition with slavery.

I don’t want to start a war with my AEI colleagues, specifically Intrade junkies Mark Perry and Jim Pethokoukis, but can I offer a small bit of skepticism about Intrade?

I understand why prediction markets are interesting. But am I the only one who thinks they are incredibly overblown? On any given day, some friend of mine will blog or tweet or otherwise opine about how Mitt Romney is now at X on Intrade or how Newt Gingrich now has a 29.3 percent chance of Y on Intrade. I am always at a loss about how much, if at all, I should care about this information.

A document the Department of Justice sent to Congress Friday shows that Eric Holder’s deputy chief of staff was made aware on the day of U.S. border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder that a weapon traced back to Operation Fast and Furious killed him. But when asked Sunday, a Justice spokesperson would not would not answer The Daily Caller’s question about whether Attorney General Eric Holder himself was informed of the connection on that day.

As I have spelled out in the foregoing five posts, I believe that the HHS mandate, beyond being an assault on general principles of religious liberty, is an open-and-shut violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Experts in the field whom I have consulted heartily agree. If there is anyone who believes that my analysis is flawed, I would be happy to consider any counter-arguments, and I will, as usual, make any appropriate corrections to my analysis.

Two bioethicists — one from Duke University, the other from the National Institute of Health — bring up the question “What makes killing wrong?” in the latest issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics. Using their definition of killing, the authors conclude if the person is “universally and irreversibly disabled” and has “no abilities to lose” then killing them to take organs for donation in order to save the lives of others should not be considered morally wrong.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who scaled back campaign appearances to be with his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said Sunday night the little girl was getting better and should be able to go home in a few days.

Speaking to Florida supporters by phone from Bella's hospital room, Santorum said she'd had a rough 36 hours with pneumonia, but was awake, alert and back to being a "beautiful, happy girl."

It's the motto of every woman's magazine article that ever was. It's the demand of every commercial that stumps for yogurt, birth control, a gym or a cup of coffee. "Me." "Time for me." "Me time." as if all those other minutes are selfless and as such, this little oasis must be carved out of the world to ensure sanity.

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

A parish priest has apologised for publishing the names of people who decided to leave the Church.

Nicolaas Janssens revealed in a newspaper published by his parish who quit their membership last year. An expert on the protection of personal data and citizen rights told the Kurier today (Thurs) that those who found themselves on the list had good chances for success in a possible lawsuit. She stressed that there “is no public interest” in the names of the people who left the Catholic Church in 2011.

Janssens, who heads the parish of Sitzendorf an der Schmida in the province of Lower Austria, admitted today that he “did not act sensitively”. The clergyman said: “I did not mean to offend anybody.”

We got to the lobby well ahead of our escort and paused, nonplussed. There was a huge cocktail party. Everyone was talking just as fast and loud as they could. The noise level was incredible. They were dressed up, some in rather garish clothing. Entering that riot of noise, especially after the day we'd had, was disorienting. We looked down at Zoe who was pressed against Rose's leg, obviously wondering what fresh hell we'd brought her to now. We looked again at that crowd and then the bellboy said, "Straight ahead, ma'am, and then through the bar to the elevators."

Here’s a fact: I have three regular part-time jobs now, and the reason I have each one of them is because of a white man. That may or may not have been the person who hired me (although in two cases it was), but my point of entry into every position was a white male.

What am I supposed to learn from that? That the patriarchy rules everything? That women who are in positions of power should do more to promote women climbing up thehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif ladder? That sexism is rampant, and the feminist battle isn’t over yet?

I guess I could.

Instead, I concluded it was white men who were most beneficial to me professionally. Because that’s the truth. Denying that is what’s problematic.

Jan Brewer give the Prez a smackdown like he is certqainly not used to.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer points at President Barack Obama after he arrived at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, in Mesa, Ariz. Brewer greeted Obama and what she got was a book critique. Of her book.

Christian Schneider writes that there's just too many birthday parties. I concur.:

On Saturday, my kids got excited for the afternoon birthday party to which they were invited. Then, they got excited for the other afternoon birthday party they were invited to. And they were even more excited for Sunday’s birthday party.

That’s right: three birthday parties this weekend. But that’s just the beginning.

The Brian Williams MSNBC debate in Florida was not only dreadfully boring — I never thought I could ever long for commercials — it was pathetic. Freed of the fear of triggering an avalanche of applause against loaded questions, Williams and his co-moderators couldn’t bring themselves to utter one single question asking the Republican candidates to respond to Obama’s mistakes. For almost two hours, not one Obama failure was cited. Apparently, his record is spotless

Wouldn't this be great if Notre Dame simply refused to comply with Obama's HHS mandate:

A group of alumni from the University of Notre Dame wrote an open letter to University President Father John Jenkins urging him to take the strongest of stances by openly and publicly stating that the school named for Our Lady will never comply with the HHS contraceptive mandate.

They are urging Fr. Jenkins to flout and disregard the HHS mandate even under threat of federal action. This would be a bold move from the most well known Catholic university in America that would likely bring a level of national focus to this issue that hasn’t been seen yet.

Citing a lack of Catholic identity, a professor is resigning from Georgetown University and heading to the University of Notre Dame, according to an open letter he wrote and published at Front Porch Republic.

This past season, several high-profile college head football and basketball coaches have been vilified and lost their jobs due to the perception that they harshly enforced disciplinary methods upon a player or players in their program. I’m not defending these coaches’ methods as I do not know the situation, but here’s what I do know. Many young men today, especially talented athletes, have been raised without a father or any other form of accountability or boundaries in their life. They have gotten whatever they want their entire lives. They do not understand the value of true leadership or the concept of respect. These young men rebel against any kind of discipline and despise authority figures. Even though they may in truth crave discipline, they have steered their own ship for too long. They have learned to do what they want, when they want, and so any kind of restrictions—whether it is healthy for them or not—are very uncomfortable. They instinctively resist accountability and become self-focused and self-absorbed. Without willingly acceding to the mentorship and authority of other men, young males with this attitude will struggle their entire lives, creating problems in the lives of those who love and depend upon them.

Today, tens of thousands of pro-life people gathered in Washington D.C. for the annual March for Life, commemorating the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that struck down existing state laws protecting unborn children. For those who have been on the March or seen footage of it on EWTN (you can hardly see it anywhere else!) it’s hard not to take note of the youthfulness of the pro-life movement.

A 15-year-old Wisconsin boy who wrote an op-ed opposing gay adoptions was censored, threatened with suspension and called ignorant by the superintendent of the Shawano School District, according to an attorney representing the child.

This has nothing to do with theology and everything to do with mudslinging for political gain. The fact that they're doing this as Catholic theologians makes it even more reprehensible. The Cardinal Newman Society reports:

In what has to be one of the most disgusting turns this 2012 campaign season has taken, more than 40 national Catholic leaders and prominent theologians from universities like Notre Dame, Boston College, and Fordham among others signed onto an open letter today urging “fellow Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail.

When Obama said he would unite us I don't think he meant unite us against him. Campus Notes has the story:

Lyndon B. Johnson, after watching Walter Cronkite conclude a special broadcast which was heavily critical of the Tet offensive, said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”

Well, this story isn’t exactly on the same level as that, but President Barack Obama may be losing the Catholic Left, with obvious implications for entrenched faculty on many Catholic college campuses. Michael Sean Winters, a lead writer for the National Catholic Reporter and vocal defender of the University of Notre Dame’s 2009 commencement honors for President Obama, wrote yesterday that he can’t see how he could ever support President Obama again after the administration’s ruling on religious exemptions for the contraceptive mandate.

Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) President Marjorie Dannenfelser will deliver her second-annual video address on Monday, January 23, nearly forty years after the Roe v. Wade decision, the group announced today. Ms. Dannenfelser hails the groundswell of support for pro-life policies in Congress and among the Republican presidential candidates, who are united in their fight against “the most committed ideologically pro-abortion president in history.”

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in a Texas political dispute, rejecting judge-drawn election maps favoring minority candidates and Democrats in the 2012 congressional and state legislature elections.

For those who think the Pope doesn't know what's going on in America, you won't see a better summation than this:

Pope Benedict XVI received a group of prelates from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at the Vatican and told them America is becoming “increasingly hostile” to Christianity, according to Zenit. But the Pope added that hope remains, especially in the intellectual and moral education of our youth.

This is a must read and a more accurate diagnosis of the issues facing America than anything you’ll hear on the campaign trail:

Highlighting the secularism that’s on the march on campuses across America, a one credit course showing how Biblical concepts can be applied in the business world has been canceled at a public Iowa college after faculty protests about the separation of church and state.

It's wonderful to know that such wonderful and beautiful things are still going on on many college campuses:

This past Sunday, in advance of the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to legalize abortion in the United States, students at Thomas Aquinas College attended a Mass for the Unborn in the campus chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity.

President Obama's senior adviser Valerie Jarrett spoke at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta during Sunday services this week. And she used the occasion to campaign for President Obama and bash the Republican Party. I'm always sad to see Christians confuse the eternal truths with lowly politics, but I don't think it should be illegal or a violation of IRS regulations. So I don't oppose Ebenezer's right to place partisan politics above the Gospel of Christ.

A prominent Anglican cleric is weighing a lawsuit against the Church of England, claiming that he has been unfairly been denied appointment as a bishop because he is homosexual.

Dr. Jeffrey John, the Dean of St. Alban’s, was nominated in 2003 to be Bishop of Reading, and again in 2010 to be Bishop of Southwark. On each occasion his nomination encountered heavy opposition because of his avowed homosexuality, and another candidate was eventually selected.

Catholic Charities USA and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington have bestowed the “Keep the Dream Alive” Award on Anthony Williams, who served as mayor of Washington from 1999 to 2007. Williams, a Catholic, supported abortion and same-sex marriage.

Also receiving awards were USDA Under Secretary Kevin Concannon and former Catholic Charities board member Janet Pape. The three were honored at a “Keep the Dream Alive” Mass at St. Aloysius Church in Washington on January 16.

An alumni group from the University of Notre Dame is criticizing the university for its “damaging and ominous decision” to no longer make available information on Catholic faculty representation by department that had previously been disclosed.

Project Sycamore reports that in recent years, the University has shown that while the law school has shown an increase in the number of Catholic faculty, a dramatic and disturbing trend of the shrinking of the number of Catholic faculty is apparent:

For the first time in almost half a century, homicide has fallen off the list of the nation's top 15 causes of death, bumped by a lung illness that often develops in elderly people who have choked on their food.

One simply does not discuss politics or religion in public. It is just not done. To offend is the gravest of sins. So say the watchers of correct discourse in our age of modernity.

Any thinking person of any political or religious stripe should immediately recognize that admonition as rubbish, claptrap to be ignored. But the stunning truth is that our society, for the most part, heeds it. Why else would a mere Christian quarterback like Tim Tebow become such a phenomenon? Chances are that several other NFL quarterbacks are Christians. But Tebow prays openly.

Despite endless talk of spending cuts and fiscal restraint in Washington over the past year, lawmakers continued to act as though the government doesn't spend nearly enough.

They introduced 874 bills in the House and Senate that would have boosted annual federal spending by more than $1 trillion if they'd all been signed into law, according to an analysis done for IBD by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.

The Catholic Church has produced a number of masterful novelists, poets, and playwrights. From Dante and Geoffrey Chaucer to Evelyn Waugh and J.R.R. Tolkien, the Catholic literary tradition is—to understate it—impressive.

I could begin this column with a quote from a post on the presidential election I saw on Craigslist this week, but it is so vicious — and violent — that I shall spare you. Mercifully, however, despite the savage activism by which the post was inspired, and which it joins, there is some difference this presidential-primary season. And I saw it on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

In a packed barn in Hollis, a Democrat asked Rick Santorum a question about abortion. She was a transplant from Santorum’s own Keystone State, and her pediatrician when she was growing up was Santorum’s future father-in-law. This gave her an immediate connection with the candidate: “We’re a lot alike, and I love that.” But “we’re also very different,” she told the candidate. She had a question about abortion.

Ya know how those crazy pro-lifers are always pointing to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's racial eugenics statements? No worries, a thing of the past.

(CNSNews.com) — In its strategic plan for the Africa Region for 2010 to 2015, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) states that it is working toward an 82 percent increase in abortion services.

A few months ago, Peggy Noonan made my day — my whole week, in fact — by accepting my Facebook friendship request. I’d always thought she was a good soul and a true lady. I looked forward to reading status updates like “Just threw on my jammies. Am sitting up with a glass of Merlot, wondering when everything turned into a bunch of political BS about narratives. ;) ”

Well, some hopes rise just to be dashed, I guess. Since we’ve become friends, Peggy hasn’t posted a thing about her day, much less served up any juicy details from Michael Medved’s latest mustache-pulling catfight with Ross Douthat. Now that I think about it, she hasn’t said a thing about any of my posts — not even when I mentioned I’d found a perfect reliquary for that 1981 Reagan inaugural license plate I’d bought for $45 on eBay.

It should be some kind of requirement, according to constitutional scholar Adam Freedman, that every presidential election have a candidate who represents the Constitution.

The “constitutional candidate” wouldn’t have a prayer of winning, of course — the best way to win the presidency, we’ve learned, is to promise to do all sorts of extra-constitutional things, to toss the text and all of its tiresome restrictions and counterweights aside in an orgy of promises and giveaways — but it would be useful, and instructive, to have someone up there on the dais to act as a kind of constitutional ombudsman. Someone tiresome and irritable, probably, who doesn’t mind beginning every sentence with “The Constitution doesn’t give you the authority to do that” or “Where does it say in the Constitution that government gets to tell me to lay off the carbs?” That sort of thing.

Although if you really think about it, we have had exactly that sort of candidate in the past two presidential elections.

Somehow this will be twisted by the media to hit Romney, probably for buying votes or as some kind of Marie Antoinette moment. I suspect it was a personal reaction to a woman in need. Here's the thing. Although I don't like Romney's record as Governor all that much, I suspect he's a pretty decent man.

Call me old fashioned, but it warms my heart to hear about a politician who felt compelled to help somebody and then used his own money to do so:

A recent study published by the Population and Pension Research Institute (PAPRI) of London provides evidence of the public-health benefits of legal protections for the unborn. This study compares public-health outcomes in Britain, Wales, and Scotland — where abortion has been legal since 1968 — with outcomes in Ireland and Northern Ireland, where abortion has been legally restricted. The study demonstrates that the Irish consistently outperform their English, Scottish, and Welsh counterparts on a variety of health measures.

“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

Watching the Sunday talk shows on American TV, the experts were all of the opinion that neither the US nor Israel will embark on attacking the Iranian nuclear facilities in 2012. I tend to agree. Neither the US nor Israel will initiate an attack on Iran. Still, I believe that these experts were off by a million miles.

Iran, just like Nazi Germany in the 1940s, will take the initiative and “help” the US president and the American public make up their mind by making the first move, by attacking a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.

And it's actually pretty decent. There's a bit of the "Whew, isn't this place strange?" but overall not too bad.

Are your jackets on, boys?” Joe Cardenas inspects his charges in first-period freshman humanities class, sees that they are all appropriately blazered and standing tall, bows his head and begins the morning Hail Mary: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee ...” Only when they have finished the prayer do they take their jackets off. They sit and open copies of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” the 14th-century English romance.

Mr. Cardenas teaches at The Heights School, a suburban Washington boys’ school affiliated with Opus Dei, the Catholic organization of which he is a member. By the standards of more famous Washington private schools, like Sidwell Friends or Georgetown Preparatory, The Heights is poor, little known and young — it was founded in 1969. But since then it has become the popular school for a small clique of Washingtonians: conservative Catholics.

Information, it's a wonderful and a frightening thing. You know the old adage, he's got enough information to be dangerous. Well, that's what the internet can sometimes offer, enough information to be dangerous.

Case in point, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, an abortion provider who founded Women on Waves, a group that provides a floating abortion clinic to women in countries where abortion is illegal. Dr. Gomperts set up a Facebook account to promote her pro-abortion activity. But, she did more than that, she provided instructions for self-induced abortions that she claimed were safe up to 9 wks. gestation

As reported by ABC News, while fielding questions at a campaign event in Windham, NH on January 5th, Rick Santorum was challenged to defend his faith by a voter who said, “We don’t need a Jesus candidate, we need an economic candidate.”

“My answer to that,” Santorum responded, “We always need a Jesus candidate. We need someone who believes in something more than themselves and not just the economy. When we say, ‘God bless America,’ do we mean it or do we just say it?”

Wasting precious little time, Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League took the bait and issued a press release on January 6th answering Santorum’s rhetorical question with what amounted to a resounding “Hell no, we don’t mean it!”

Did you use Google today? Perhaps you noticed the Doodle in honor of 17th century scientist Nicolas Steno, a pioneer in both anatomy and geology. Google often honors scientists, authors and inventors with its occasional homepage art, but what’s interesting about this one is the religious side to Steno’s life. The Los Angeles Times notes the scientist’s shift to more religious priorities in a rather abrupt way.

The most acute division on the right — the one that will give Mitt Romney the most trouble — is not between moderates and hard-core right-wingers, between electability-minded pragmatists and ideologues, or between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment. It is between those Republicans who disagree with Barack Obama, believing his policies to be mistaken, and those who hate Barack Obama, believing him to be wicked.

Forgive me for being a little bit late on writing about this issue but my week last week was so jammed up with things going on that I didn’t get a chance to write in depth about this (although I did comment at Twitter). What am I talking about, you may ask? Liberal commentator Alan Colmes’ guttersnipe cheap shot at GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum and his family over how they handled the grieving process over the loss of their newborn baby boy Gabriel back in 1996. The remarks, made last Monday on a Fox News segment, were reported by the Huffington Post:

Pope Benedict XVI baptized 16 infants in the Sistine Chapel on January 8, the feast of the Baptism of Christ, and reminded the childrens’ parents and godparents of their duties to promote the children’s faith, according to Catholic Culture.

The Pope’s homily touched on the importance of receiving the sacraments and a strong religious education:

Wait. I thought he hated Jews. How dare this researcher be interested in truth. CNA reports:

Pope Pius XII helped a group of 500 Jewish refugees escape death at the hands of the Nazis and made a touching public tribute to the Jewishness of the man seeking their deliverance, new research shows.

“This is not a liberal or conservative issue. This should be of interest to all people, anyone who wants to get a sincere, objective account of who Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, really was,” William Doino, Jr. told CNA on Jan. 9.

...Justices Thomas and Alito each wrote concurring opinions. Although I generally find myself in agreement with the constitutional philosophy espoused by Justice Thomas, in this instance I find that I am most in agreement with the concurrence authored by Justice Alito, in which he was joined by ... Justice Kagan of all people:

Today is the New Hampshire Primary. The good people of NH will have to chose between 5 imperfect candidates that the GOP has trotted out for this year's election. Then will come South Carolina. Before you know it it will be Super Tuesday, then the Convention and the GOP will put their flawed candidate against the flawed Democrat candidate, we will pick the one who we believe will do the lesser damage and rest for a few months before we start talking about the 2016 presidential elections. In November, millions of flawed individuals will vote for their flawed candidates and we will be saddled with 4 years of flawed leadership. Now, before anyone thinks I have finally jumped in the deep end of the pool of cynicism, I am still in the kiddy pool.

White House spokesman Jay Carney retreated into a rhetorical closet on Tuesday while protecting his boss from the political taint of agreeing with former Senator Rick Santorum, a leading social conservative.

Carney’s withdrawal came after a question about the truth of Santorum’s claim on Monday that “President Obama says he has the same position I have on gay marriage.”

Bang the drum slowly and summon all ye couch potatoes to pay homage to a food group that shall be no more: the preserved completely unhealthy no matter what you do sweet that's cheap, not gourmet, not cool and decidely lazy eating.

WOLF BLITZER: Welcome to back to the CNN Election Center, right now, and our continuing coverage of the 2012 Republican presidential primary. I’m Wolf Blitzer, and I’m here in the CNN World Headquarters, which houses, but is not the same as, the CNN Election Center, with CNN’s political team, starting with Roland Martin, David Gergen, and Dana Loesch, right now, and James Carville live via satellite from Washington, James Carville. We’ll also be checking in with Alex Castellanos and Erick Erickson in New Hampshire, Erin Burnett, Gloria Berger and John King over in the CNN Studios in Atlanta, and in the Situation Room, we’ve got Anderson Cooper, Ali Velshi, and Piers Morgan, who will be breaking off at the top of the hour to form his own rogue panel with Ari Fleischer, Dana Bash, Amy Holmes, Isha Sesay, Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, actress January Jones, and pop star Nikki Minaj, all as part of CNN’s America’s Choice 2012 coverage from the CNN Election Center

Liberal outlets have stopped at nothing to present Rick Santorum as an extreme and insensitive candidate, attempting to use his own words to do so. Last week, The New Republic staff posted “A Long List of the Most Terrible Things Rick Santorum Has Ever Said.” Like ThinkProgress’s list of “outrageous” things that I commented on last Friday, most of TNR’s quotations either distort Santorum’s message, or simply are not outrageous at all — in fact, they’re often just simply factual. Following are some of Santorum’s more “terrible” statements:

Theologians are still reeling from the bishops’ condemnation of Fordham theologian Elizabeth Johnson’s book “Quest for the Living God,” according to the National Catholic Reporter.

And now some theologians fear that because of the actions of the bishops, theology will simply become propaganda and a laughingstock– that is, if you’re a theologian whose credibility rests on pushing the envelope or, in some cases, dissenting outright from the Church.

This is from the Amazing Grace for Mothers book. Pretty cool story that shows that sometimes we can mess things up pretty badly but things can work out if you open yourself to faith and love:

Mommy, where’s my daddy?” My four-year-old son Jacob asked me. The question was a jolt to our leisurly Sunday afternoon walk together. I always knew the question would one day come, but I was not expecting it so soon.“Dear God,” I prayed, “help me find the words.” How could I possibly explain to my young son the mistakes of my foolhardy past? His father, Carlos, and I had been dating only a month when I became pregnant. Since I had ignored the symptoms for at least three months, when I finally took a pregnancy test, there was a doubt as to who the father was. I had gotten together with an old boyfriend for a one-night fling just before I began seeing Carlos.

This is amazing. The entire student body of Christendom College will once again join the hundreds of thousands of pro-life Americans at the 39th Annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.

Wow.

Christendom has canceled classes for the day and the Student Activities Council has charted buses to transport over 400 people from its Front Royal, Virginia, campus. Members of the administration and faculty will also be joining them.

In his annual address to ambassadors to the Vatican today, Pope Benedict XVI warned that laws permitting abortion and undermining the traditional family are threatening “the future of humanity.” Speaking particularly of the West, the Holy Father said, “I am convinced that legislative measures which not only permit but at times even promote abortion for reasons of convenience or for questionable medical motives compromise the education of young people and, as a result, the future of humanity.”

Patrick Reilly, President of the Cardinal Newman Society, wrote in Crisis Magazine recently that Catholics should beware of compromise with the Obama administration, saying, “a policy that does not protect the religious liberty of all Americans is an erosion of religious liberty.”

January 9, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Canon lawyers at two American dioceses disagree over the question of jurisdiction in the case of Michael Voris and RealCatholicTV, who were recently asked by the Archdiocese of Detroit to stop using the name “Catholic” in their work.

Some things never change because they cannot change; they are part of the human condition. And that holds true even for the most inhuman of behaviors—or perhaps especially so, because those actions so cut against the grain of our deepest instincts.

An hugely revealing item ran yesterday on “The Abortioneers” website, (subtitled, ”The ins and outs and ups and downs of direct service in the field of abortion care”). The title of the piece was “Working 9-5: How we Talk (or Don’t) about abortion.”

Didn't expect it to be good but Jim Nolte explains how this movie goes out of its way to bash the Catholic Church:

The new “found footage” horror entry, “The Devil Inside,” has plenty of problems as a stand alone film. My colleague Christian Toto points out many of them here. Reportedly, Paramount purchased the exorcist story for somewhere around a million dollars, which means that even after the costs associated with advertising, profits will be pouring in after only one weekend. Good for them; the marketing was better than the film. What’s new?

90 days. Nothing brightens you Sunday like a steaming cup of doom. This dude says the EU will collapse in the next 90 days. And we're toast. But the Giants won, so there's that.

Twenty-two months of hysteria of an impending European financial collapse, starting with Greece in March of 2010, will finally come to an end in 2012, according to the founder of Trends Research Institute, Gerald Celente.

Dude in this video kinda' freaks me out. He freaks me out so much and his obsession with a zombie apocalype is so well thought out that I'm not sure I'd seek his aid if one did break out.Continue reading>>>

"When we say 'God bless America,' do we mean it or do we just say it?" he asked the crowd in the auditorium at Windham High School. The former Pennsylvania senator then mimicked those Republicans who, he says, advise him, "Don't talk about those things in New Hampshire."

Santorum is unapologetically the same staunch conservative in the Granite State that he was in Iowa and -- judging from the applause during the town hall forum sponsored by the Southern New Hampshire 9-12 Project -- God is still more popular here than some Republicans may suspect.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the social conservative message that fueled Santorum's surge in the Iowa caucuses, where evangelical Protestants are an influential constituency, will not go over well in New Hampshire. Yet Santorum appears determined to try to prove the conventional wisdom wrong.

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to figuring out the reasons for a record setting year for pro-life legislation.

Last week, the Washington Post’s Wonkblog posted a story by Sarah Kliff about the success that pro-lifers enjoyed enacting incremental state-level laws this past year. The Guttmacher Institute reports that 83 pro-life laws were passed in 2011, than double the previous record of 34, enacted in 2005, and more than triple the 23 enacted in 2010.

Kliff attributes this increase in pro-life laws to the political gains that Republicans made during the 2010 election. While there is certainly some truth to this, there are a number of long term trends that escape Kliff’s attention. First, since...

The same week as the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., a former Congresswoman and advocate of abortion rights will help train women to run for public office at the University of Scranton, a Jesuit university in Pennsylvania.

This is the kind of science I like. In-freakin-visibility even though its only for like 1/40 trillionth of a second. Do you know what I could get done being invisible for that amount of time. Well me, not much. But for a guy like Usain Bolt or Carl Lewis they could probably do lots.

It's one thing to make an object invisible, like Harry Potter's mythical cloak. But scientists have made an entire event impossible to see. They have invented a time masker.

Didn’t want to let this go by, even though you might have already seen it. According to Planned Parenthood’s end-of-the-year report, the organization refers far fewer women for adoption than they like to claim — and perform far more abortions than they like to tout, too. In a nutshell: Adoption referrals continue to go down, while the number of abortions continue to go up...

The stories behind ten college professors caught dealing drugs. No reason behind posting this. I just found it interesting. Although if you want a Catholic connection, one of the college profs taught at Villanova University.

While the bulk of drug use and distribution that happens on college campuses is done by students and visitors to the school, faculty can sometimes play a role as well. Whether using, selling, or both, many professors have gotten caught up in illegal activities that have played a significant role in ending their academic careers and landing them some serious jail time. Here, we’ve featured just 10 professors who ended up on the wrong side of the law for manufacturing, using, and selling drugs on campus or in their communities.

Now that Rick Santorum has basically tied Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucus, the knives are really out for Rick. On the one hand, he will undoubtedly experience a surge in the polls and in fundraising. On the other hand, as every conservative who has ascended in the polls has before, he will face a firestorm of criticism from both left and right. I discussed this in my post yesterday, and now things have only gone into overdrive. As someone who reads secular conservative blogs, there is a lot of concern that Santorum is some kind of “big government” conservative. I think this is absurd, as does a pretty famous conservative figure not known for particularly liking big government types: Rush Limbaugh. Here’s what he had to say

Late in 2011, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released abortion surveillance data for the year 2008. The figures indicate that the number of abortions declined very slightly from 2007. Or so we think. Federal reporting standards for abortion are notoriously weak and several states typically refuse to report data to the CDC. The 2008 figures are no exception. California, Florida, Maryland, and New Hampshire all failed to report complete data to the CDC. In fact, only 43 states have reported abortion data to the CDC every year between 1999 and 2008. Furthermore, even among states that report, there exist legitimate questions about both the consistency and reliability of this data.

And it's not too bad. It focuses alot on his religion, but it isn't a hit piece.

WASHINGTON — As a teenager growing up in Butler, Pa., Rick Santorum spent Sunday mornings as an altar boy, taking wheelchair-bound veterans to Roman Catholic Mass. In the ninth grade, he announced his intention to hold elective office. “I’m going to be governor of Pennsylvania,” he declared, according to his brother Dan.

Years later, as a married man and a member of Congress, Mr. Santorum wove these two strands of his life — his faith and his political aspirations — into one. Then, in 1996

The B-Movie Catechism has Geordi LaForge busting a move. And an interesting point about atheists and heaven:

Remember when made for TV movies were good? Okay, maybe not good, but you know, enjoyable in a cheesy kind of way? Or at least watchable? I know, it’s been a long while, but there really was such a time in days of yore. And just in case you can’t remember those fabled days, maybe this little ditty from the made for television magnum opus The Midnight Hour will jog your memory. (And before you ask, yes, that’s Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge busting a move. Sort of.)

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), David Clohessy, and its outreach director, Barbara Dorris:

Yesterday I said, “[David] Clohessy never tires of lecturing the Catholic Church on the need for transparency, yet when he is in the hot seat he rebels.” I was referring to his anger at being subpoenaed to testify in a St. Louis court on Monday regarding public statements he made that were allegedly taken from lawyer Rebecca Randles in violation of a court gag order. Now Clohessy is justifying a double standard.

“We believe that there are two standards of transparency,” Clohessy said.

Anyone who claims that things have been getting better in the Archdiocese of Detroit the past five years or so – and if they are, then the improvements have been so negligible so as to be non-existent – needs to open their eyes and realize that stupid, crazy and irregular things are still going on. And I’m not just talking about garish statues in the sanctuary, either.

The apostolic visit to the Catholic Pontifical University of Perù (PUCP), by the Vatican, has failed, according to The Vatican Insider.

In what must be considered a stunning display of disrespect to the Vatican, the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, has sent the Vatican appointed apostolic visitor Cardinal Peter Erdo of Budapest, Hungary packing.

Today, the Susan B. Anthony List praised Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann for her groundbreaking pro-life leadership following her announcement that she will drop out of the 2012 presidential race. Bachmann was one of the five top candidates to sign the Susan B. Anthony List Pro-life Presidential Leadership Pledge and has been a heroic pro-life leader.

Thank you sir, may I have another. I got hit when I went to Catholic school and I deserved it every time. Spare the rod, you know the rest...

NEW ORLEANS — A Catholic high school that was the country’s last refuge of corporal punishment has ended a legal struggle over control of the school and agreed that the days of paddling are over.

“There will be no attempt to reinstate corporal punishment,” said Dan Davillier, a board member of St. Augustine High School who helped fashion the out-of-court settlement on Dec. 23 with the Josephites, the Roman Catholic order that founded the school 60 years ago.

In its latest move to effect religious cleansing in Africa’s largest country, Boko Haram — the Nigerian Islamist movement that claimed responsibility for the deadly Christmas Day bombings of a Catholic church, an evangelical church, and three police stations — is now reportedly warning all Christians in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north to evacuate by Friday or else face new attacks. It also vowed to confront Nigerian troops sent to quell four of the northern states it has targeted with violence.

Catholic archbishop John Onaiyekan, of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, appealed for help. “It’s a national tragedy. We are all unsecured. It’s not only Catholic. Today it’s us. Tomorrow we don’t know who it will be,”

The first thing to understand about the dispute between the Archdiocese of Detroit and Michael Voris and/or RealCatholicTV is that the dispute turns essentially on canon law. As a canonical dispute, it will not be decided by seeing who musters more or louder supporters in the blogosphere; it will be decided by recognizing what Church law says about such matters and then abiding by that finding.

The Holy Father has accepted the resignation from the office of Auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (U.S.A.) presented by H.E.Bp. Gabino Zavala, Tit. Bishop of Tamascani, in conformity with Canons 411 and 401 §2 of the Code of Canon Law.

The reason for this 401 §2 (i.e. early) resignation? One we found only in the Italian press: the Bishop has two teenage children, it has been "found". [Source: TMNews (in Italian); tip: Papa Ratzinger blog.]

It was, in it’s way, a great moment. Dumb and profound at once. On NBC television, singer Cee Lo Green ushered in 2012 at a Times Square studio by singing John Lennon​’s leftist anthem “Imagine,” only he updated an originally atheist lyric so that it now came out as a multiculturally sensitive, ecumenical one. In 1971, Lennon wrote and sang about his paradise on earth, in which there’s “nothing to kill or die for/and no religion too.” Green changed that to “nothing to kill or die for/and all religion’s true.”

I’m very much in favor of “Imagine” as a living document. If you want to know what left-liberals are thinking at a given moment just listen to how they tweak this dystopian dirge to reflect resentments and sensitivites du jour. In January 2012, multiculturalism trumps atheism.

Late last night I stepped outside my hotel here to have a smoke and saw a big bus pull up in front of the hotel next door, where the Rick Santorum campaign is staying. This aroused my curiosity, but not enough to make me walk 200 yards through the cold windy Iowa night to investigate. And then today, I drove 40 miles up the road to Boone, where Santorum was having an event at a Pizza Ranch restaurant, and saw the bus at close range:

Archbishop George Stack Of Cardiff,in a strongly worded criticism of the Welsh government’s proposals on presumed consent for organ donations,has insisted that ‘our bodies are not an asset of the state’.

‘Archbishop of Cardiff George Stack has warned that “our bodies are not an asset of the state”.

His attack on the proposals from the Labour Welsh Government follow similar opposition by Anglican Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan.

The Catholic leader said this was an example of when there were “differing views of what constitutes the common good”.

He said:“Here in Wales in particular,I think of the current consultation on a law proposing presumed consent for the donation of organs after death. I agree with my fellow church leaders that our organs should be donated as a gift to others and not as a duty.

“The dignity of the human person demands that our autonomy be respected in this profoundly important area.”

The National Catholic Reporter has selected its “Person of the Year.” And it’s a slap in the face of the bishops.

Is it Pope Benedict? Nah! Is it the translators of the new missal? You must be kidding. Or how about the President of Belmont Abbey College Bill Thierfelder who filed a lawsuit to stop Obamacare’s threat to religious liberty? Nope.

An email obtained by the Cardinal Newman Society shows that Fordham University Law School’s Public Interest Resource Center circulated an email advertising a job opening at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a militant abortion-rights organization which has battled against sonogram laws, secured government funding for abortion, and advances its mission of ensuring abortion is “a fundamental right that all governments are legally obligated to protect, respect and fulfill.”

Big news today from Iran, confirming once again that the hapless regime in Tehran proceeds down its death spiral. The first is the spectacular collapse of the national currency, which has lost 35% of its value since September. The second headline, in an extraordinary press conference by the effective commander of the Revolutionary Guards, is the admission that the incarcerated leaders of the Green Movement have so much powerful support that the regime dares not arrest them.

via Patrick Madrid: This is noteworthy: Father John Corapi’s Internet presence at sites such as the www.theblacksheepdog.us and http://theblacksheepdog.wordpress.com has vanished, ditto for his presence on YouTube and Facebook. No one I know has any clue what happened to him, but there are several possible scenarios that would explain this. The one I hope is correct is that he has reconciled with the S.O.L.T. order he once was a member of and, more importantly, that he has reconciled with the Catholic Church, from which it certainly seemed he was distancing himself in the wake of all the unpleasantness that erupted last year.

I'm normally for anything that puts Roseanne Barr behind bars but not this:

Oh, say can you sing?

And, more importantly, can you sing it the "right" way -- the way one Indiana lawmaker thinks the national anthem should be sung?

Sen. Vaneta Becker, R-Evansville, has introduced a bill that would set specific "performance standards" for singing and playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at any event sponsored by public schools and state universities.

What’s something you always tell your team before they go out on the field?

I’ve used a new routine over the last year and a half, having a player be the last person to speak to the team before a game. That’s been interesting. It was unusual at first, but there are good reasons why I did that. The last thing I say to the team is a prayer that highlights scripture from the Bible that’s representative of our theme for the week.